Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

On 4/30/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

> Certainly, the state's sovereignty may properly impinge on the family's
> where a family's practices involve violence towards a family member. But
> equating ordinary, historic religious beliefs and practices with violence,
> and substituting the family's sovereignty with the state's in such matters,
> is a long meander down the yellow brick road towards totalitarianism. The
> kinds of things Dawkins suggests in this regard strike at the heart of open
> democratic culture and should be despised by anyone who really cares about
> justice and freedom.

What does Dawkins suggest that leads you to these conclusions?

For instance with the concept of hell and abuse, he quoted from a
letter of a woman who had been exposed to both and was still
struggling with the former. So perhaps the question should be about
these 'ordinary beliefs and practices'. Are they really that ordinary
and are they reasonable? And where lie the boundaries between ordinary
and excessive?

Why should we accept that the state can step in where the violence is
physical but when it involves issues of mental cruelty, we somehow
find such intervention 'totalitarian'?

> This is particularly so when the state purports to define what religious beliefs a family may
> properly perpetuate. The link between Dawkins' view of the state as parens patrie in matters of
> religion and the practices of atheistic states such as Soviet Russia, China, and North Korea, are
> direct and obvious.

Are they really? And is this really Dawkins argument?

ps. I was fascinated to hear that several US states still have laws on
the books which prohibit atheists from holding positions of public
office. While most likely unenforcable, it sends an interesting
message. Equating Dawkins position with the totalitarian supression of
faith an other liberties, misses Dawkins' point.

By focusing on these strawmen we miss an opportunity to deal with a
real issue of concern namely the cost of some of these 'ordinary'
practices on our children.

As others have reasonably pointed out, identifying these problems is
one thing, proposing suitable , practical and reasonable actions is
much harder. And yet, that by itself should not cause us to shy away
from considering these issues intellectually. One may be quick to
create strawmen about atheists rather than address their position and
yet we object to atheists doing the same about Christians.

Ironic isn't it?

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Received on Mon Apr 30 12:57:42 2007